The protest statement was against the withdrawal of the Palestinian detention camp at the Free University of Berlin (May 7, 2024).
Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) had to comment on the so-called funding issue before the Bundestag’s education committee on Tuesday. The coalition had called for a special committee meeting to clarify what role the minister played in the events surrounding the Berlin lecturers’ protest statement against the violent evacuation of the Palestinian camp at the Free University of Berlin (FU). Stark-Watzinger accused the signatories of ignoring “hatred against Jews and Israel” and trivializing violence. In an email NDR Someone in the Department of Education leadership reportedly agreed to investigate whether the statement’s content was to some extent criminal and whether the department could cut off funding to its signers.
But the commission could not clarify much on Tuesday. Stark-Watzinger insisted on her previous position that it was a “misunderstanding in the sense that it was a misunderstood order.” Her State Secretary Sabine Döring (FDP) had ordered a legal review of the events at FU by telephone in May. This could be understood to mean that both a legal review and a review of the funding consequences should be carried out. The State Secretary explained that the latter was not her intention. The order was first “temporarily suspended” by the university’s department chair and then revoked by Döring. Stark-Watzinger insisted that she “did not and did not want to order the lecturer to investigate the funding consequences” and that she had made arrangements to clarify the matter immediately when she learned of the incident in June. As a result, State Secretary Döring was fired.
The minister claimed only that she had obtained the list of signatories to the Defense Department-sponsored declaration after the press reports. She said the university dean had commissioned the list “on his own initiative.” The list was compiled “only for the level of information within the department.”
The committee could not definitively determine whether the incident was an expected subordinate’s submission or whether Doering was simply a pawn victim. Neither the head of the higher education department nor the fired secretary of state were allowed to testify at the special session. Doering’s emergency motion to lift the confidentiality obligation was denied by the court last Friday.
Andreas Keller, vice president of the Education and Science Union (GEW), expressed regret in a statement on Tuesday. Stark-Watzinger “missed another opportunity to refute the allegations against her and her home.” It is not yet clear whether “the home inspections were ordered and who ordered them.” Whether a research project receives funding from the ministry should not depend on the political views of the researcher. Nor is it the job of the research minister to create a “blacklist” of critical scientists. Keller called for the establishment of an inquiry commission to put an end to “disrespectful slander” because, unlike a regular commission, such a commission would be able to hear witnesses and experts and submit files.
